Elijah's Cornbread Charmer

Elijah's room in the sunniest one in our home! Here is its story: My husband completely gutted and renovated this room when we moved into our house a year and a half ago - new walls, ceiling, insulation, electrical, and windows. The previous owner had painted dark hunter green paint OVER aged wallpaper (ugh!), and there were lots of big dog scratches on the walls.

I wanted the room to be cheerful and playful, and I wanted a color that would go well with the cherry crib and dresser we'd been generously given, so I chose "Cornbread" from Martha Stewart's line of paint (and recently discovered she chose the same color for her bedroom in her East Hampton house! Albeit with a ballet slipper pink ceiling.)

Since my husband is very handy and is constantly using tools to work on our house, we fell in love with the alphabet cards you see above the crib. We also liked that they were a safe form of artwork to hang near a crib. Elijah enjoys gazing at them and saying his ABC's, and at two years old, he's surprisingly interested in all things mechanical!

Many of the accessories in the room were mine as a child. I still adore that Ferris Wheel lamp, which is also a music box. The original shade was darling, but very yellowed, so I recovered it in strips of old maps. My husband often travels to Africa for work, and we both lived and worked overseas before getting married, so I love decorating with maps to represent that love we have for the world.

My Grammy made the fabric house you see on the dresser, as well as matching fabric-covered furniture and bears, which still dwell inside of it (plus a little Goldilocks!). I spent many hours playing with them as a child. The artwork above the play table is merely framed pages from one of my favorite childhood Richard Scarry books, matted on top of gray corduroy.

Items in this room that are secondhand finds or hand-me-downs include the crib, dresser, table, chairs, upholstered child-sized armchair, rocking horse, scooter wall hooks, sailboat, abacus, and the framed paint-by-number. (What a great find that piece of artwork was - I stumbled upon it at a local antique store. The colors perfectly matched our muted palette - plus we live high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with similar views to what the serene scene depicts.)

I searched high and low for the right rug, and we chose this one because it represents our boys' love for vehicles, yet it is also whimsical (and not in primary colors!). It seemed like a perfect match for the Richard Scarry illustrations as well.

The clipboard mounted on the wall allows me to change out artwork whenever inspiration strikes, whether it be drawings made by Elijah's Aunt Emily or special birthday cards that are fun to display.

We spend a lot of time in this room. Our home is one story and very small, so this is where we change lots of cloth diapers, keep both of our sons' clothes, socks, and shoes (despite the lack of closet!), and have lots of fun playing and reading. A lot of love went into decorating this room, and it has become one of my favorite spaces!